


Be cunning, and full of tricks.

by Periphyton



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale's true form is a rabbit, BAMF AziraBunny, BAMF Aziraphale (Good Omens), He also helped Richard Adams with Watership Down, He's a Principalibunny, Inspired by Fanlan's The Rabbit and the Serpent AU, M/M, violence gore and blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-18 12:35:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21944077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Periphyton/pseuds/Periphyton
Summary: Inspired by Fanlan's AU The Rabbit and the Serpent. Angels and demons true forms are symbolic animals, and Aziraphale is a rabbit. A very cute little fluffy white bunny. Underestimate him at your peril.
Comments: 22
Kudos: 82





	Be cunning, and full of tricks.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fanlan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fanlan/gifts).



> I wanted to write a story about AziraBunny playing to his strengths as a rabbit, with Fanlan's permission to write in her AU. Rabbits are prey animals, but they are also tricksters in many cultures, and are still wild animals that can be very fierce. I've got a carrot treat for the first person to find all four rabbit cultural tropes that I included in this story. Thank you Fanlan for the inspiration and permission to use your story, this was so much fun to write!

Aziraphale ran through Soho as demon chased him through the back streets. Run away, run away, be brave and run away, his hind legs had thumped out a warning, before he dashed out through the streets. He had felt a human on the edge of his senses thinking of help him, and the angel didn’t want any of the humans in his warren to get caught up in this. 

The demon had tried to take him by surprise. It was good, Aziraphale admitted to himself. But his Mother had not made a mistake when she made her favorite Principality a bunny rabbit. He could extend his senses of sight and hearing around nearly 360 degrees, and blend in to whatever background he needed to hide in, whether it was a grassy field or the tangled streets of his warren in London. When he had spotted the demon earlier, he had flashed out his angelic presence like a flash of his fluffy white tail to draw the demon’s attention to him and away from his humans. Now he ran away from it in his human body, rather than dash way in his true form which could run far too fast for it to keep up with. 

The smaller demon tripped him, picked him up and thrust him against a wall. It was a weasel, with black beady eyes that would kill for sheer blood lust. “Caught you, little bunny,” it sneered. “Can I rip your throat out?” 

“Yes,” Aziraphale whimpered, caught, captured, and trembling with fear. “Please, just do it here. Do it quickly,” he begged, and glanced down to the dark dead end of the ally where another demon lurked in the shadows. He could feel the cold presence of a snake. Not his own wise serpent but a viper, waiting in the shadows ready to strike with deadly poison. He raised his trembling eyes to meet the dead black ones, and tears started to leak out. “Don’t bring me down there. Please not over there, just discorporate me here, I beg you!”

The weasel demon giggled. It was a sound that took delight in another’s pain. “Ok, down there it is then,” it said, and dragged Aziraphale down to the shadowed wall. “Look what I caught Daboia, a cute little bunny for you to – AAAGGGGHHHHhhhhhhh!!” The demon screamed as the terrified human shaped angel in his grasp returned to his true form, strong hind legs kicking with enough force to rip his arm to the bone. The cute little bunny bit down with front teeth that could cut through wood and wire, biting the demon’s hand clean off, its black bloody ichor staining the fluffy white fur. Before the demon could transform into a weasel and escape Aziraphale jumped up and latched on to its throat, biting down and kicking with all his might. The barest rustle of scales against wood gave him enough warning to leap off the body as the viper struck, biting the other demon instead and finishing killing the body, sending the weasel demon back to hell to stand in line and fill out the paperwork to get a new body. 

The viper curled up to strike at the rabbit that had tricked him into biting it’s hunting mate. Aziraphale threw his body against a precariously balanced pile of rubbish so that it fell onto the snake, breaking the coil it would strike from. Then he jumped at it, biting down on the back just behind the head so it couldn’t sink its fangs into him. He kicked and kicked, shredding scales off of skin to get to the vulnerable tissue beneath. Underneath him the demon shifted to its human form to try to shake the killer bunny off its back, but Aziraphale kept to his true form, and shifted around to latch onto the demon’s human throat. His rabbit form could fight better than his human one, and the wounds from his angelic true nature could cause damage to the demon’s true form in a way his human form could not. 

So that was what a human man saw, when he ran to see what the commotion was about. A human-shaped being, his chest heaving and bloody bubbling gasps bursting around his mouth as a white rabbit tore out his throat, it’s fur covered in blood. He stood there numb with shock, as his mind refused to comprehend the transformation of a blood-stained killer rabbit into a human man. The human’s poor brain scrambled desperately to latch on to anything that it could identify as ‘real’ instead of ‘harmless looking man that’s an eldritch horror that can’t be standing in front of me, adjusting his bow tie.’ Somehow the fact that the man’s hair was as white and fluffy as the rabbit he had just seen was more terrifying then the blood stains around the man’s mouth. 

“Oh dear, you really don’t want to remember this,” said the harmless looking bloodstained eldritch horror, as prim and proper as anything from the BBC. He waved his hand, and the man blinked, turned around, and left to get very, very drunk somewhere else. He was supposed to be working on a movie scene with the rest of the group, and had just gone out for a walk to clear his mind. He wasn’t supposed to have seen – what? Something horrible, something about a – bunny? With blood? Bloody hell, he needed a drink.

After the human left Aziraphale snapped his fingers to get the demon blood off his face and clothes. He desperately needed a shower and some good grooming to get all the blood out of his fur, and something to take the taste of blood out of his mouth. “And the next time you come to hunt in my warren, I’ll drop an anvil on your head, embleer elil*,” he told the corpses the demons had left behind. He hated having to fight and get blood all over his fur but all of London his warren, and Soho in particular where he had his burrow. His Mother had sent him to Earth as a guardian, and guard it he would, as fiercely as any Owsla** in the field. Here he knew every tunnel, every corner and bolt hole, and here he could use all his tricks and cunning to do his job. It was only when his angelic superiors came to him as birds of prey and he couldn’t defend himself or run from them that he went sometimes went tharn.*** But tonight that had not happened. Tonight he had defended his warren, as his Mother had created him to do.

Aziraphale gave his bow tie one further tug, and went to find a new restaurant Crowley had mentioned that specialized in vegetarian sushi and had a fine sake collection, to take the taste of demon blood out his mouth. 

*embleer elil – stinking enemy  
** Owsla – elite guard of a warren, good at fighting and stealth  
*** Tharn – paralized by fear, staring at the jaws of elil without moving. 

Source: Lapine language, wikipedia, from the novel Watership Down by Richard Adams.

~~~~~*~~~~~~

Later that year Crowley and Aziraphale went out to see a new movie together, in theory to determine how they could include it in their reports to heaven and hell, but actually because they both wanted to see it together. The movie hadn’t even made it through the opening credits before Crowley was laughing in disbelief at the insane whimsy that only a very particular group of British humans could come up with, while Aziraphale pursed his lips at the blasphemous representation of a king he had once served. 

Until they got to one specific scene. That scene. That very specific scene. Crowley watched, amused at the bloody antics on the screen. He turned to the angel to see how his little bunny was handling this, and one eyebrow crept up above his glasses to see the very smug look on his bunny’s face. Aziraphale returned Crowley’s inquiring gaze with a smile that would latter be described as, ‘just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing,’ and ate another handful of popcorn.


End file.
